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because people listen
to
the reports of people like D'Souza, which I
place in the category of Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not. Black studies faculty
are often the parents of college-bound children. We try to direct under–
graduates in directions where we would like to see our own children go.
Most black faculty do not encourage our children or the children of
others to become involved in faddish movements such as deconstruction,
romantic racialism, or the radical reconstruction of gender. Furthermore,
most black studies faculty feel that the real struggle is not for the admin–
istrative autonomy of black studies. For my part, I agree with such senior
black scholars as John Hope Franklin and Adelaide Cromwell, who have
insisted that African-American content and black faculty should be inte–
grated into the standing departments of the university. It's only the lu–
natic fringe who view departmental autonomy for black studies as a
panacea for all our problems.
Abigail Thernstrom:
I have a connected question both for AI Shanker
and for Arthur Schlesinger that goes back to the Portland baseline essays,
the Bible for the Afrocentric movement. How serious is this scholarly
trash taken, say, in a school in Battle Creek, Michigan? Does this stuff
really matter? Or are you talking about the major urban school systems
with high concentrations of black kids?
Arthur Schlesinger:
I'm sure AI knows much more than I do. When I
served on the New York board to revise the social studies curriculum and
I asked to what extent guidelines from above determine what happens in
the classroom, the answer I got from teachers was that there was a kind
of framework, but it did not circumscribe teachers in any notable way.
It was a matter of interpretation. I got the impression that whereas it
would serve as a vindication for people who wanted to teach in one
way or another, it would not necessarily change their teaching methods.
It was more a question of the allocation of time, the reduction of time
- European history against third world history. I think AI Shanker has a
better idea of this than I do.
Al Shanker:
I think it is true that some teachers have a very strong
commitment to what they do, and it is very difficult to have them
change it. Basically, they can do what they want. We should not under–
estimate the ability of any fad to sweep the schools, especially where
large numbers of people do not have a very firm background in their
own fields. That's true of very large numbers of people. They are always
looking for textbooks. Textbooks are of terrible quality because they
result from pressures in different states: in order to sell them, publishers
have to have eight to ten or eleven states adopt them. That means you'll
